'Now—,' exclaimed Virginia, with a beating heart.
The Professor put his hand in his pocket, and drew slowly forth from it an object which Virginia knew well. It reminded her of the most innocent period of her life; but she hated the very sight of it none the less. It was a Colenso's Arithmetic.
'Come,' said the Professor, 'no truths are so pure and necessary as those of mathematics; you shall at once begin the glorious apprehension of them.'
'Oh, Paul,' cried Virginia, in an agony, 'but I really don't care for truth at all; and you know that when I broke your tin box open and read your private letters in my search for it, you were very angry with me.'
'Ah!' said Paul, holding up his finger, 'but those were not necessary truths. Truths about human action and character are not necessary truths; therefore men of science care nothing about them, and they have no place in scientific systems of ethics. Pure truths are of a very different character; and, however much you may misunderstand your own inclinations, you can really care for nothing so much as doing a few sums. I will set you some very easy ones to begin with, and you shall do them by yourself, whilst I magnify in the next room the parasites of the missing link.'
Virginia saw that there was no help for it. She did her sums by herself the whole morning, which, as at school she had been very good at arithmetic, was not a hard task for her, and Paul magnified parasites in the next room, and prepared slides for his microscope.
When they met again, Paul began skipping and dancing, as if he had gone quite out of his senses, and every now and then between the skips he gave a sepulchral groan. Virginia asked him in astonishment what on earth was the matter with him.
'Matter!' he exclaimed. 'Why, Humanity is at last perfect! All the evils of existence are removed; we neither of us believe in a God or a celestial future; and we are both in full enjoyment of the higher pleasures and the apprehension of scientific truth. And therefore I skip because Humanity is so unspeakably happy, and I groan because it is so unspeakably solemn.'
'Alas! alas!' cried Virginia, 'and would not you like to kiss me?'
'No,' said the Professor, sternly; 'and you would not like me to kiss you. It is impossible that one half of Humanity should prefer the pleasure of unlawful love to the pleasure of finding out scientific truths.'